Also By This Author

Wild Fermentation and Fermentation Workshop with Sandor Ellix Katz: Set

Foreword by Sally Fallon

Reviews

The New Yorker Magazine

Nature's Spoils

By Burkhardt Bilger

November 22, 2010

A self-avowed “fermentation fetishist,” Katz travels around the country giving lectures and demonstrations, spreading the gospel of sauerkraut, dill pickles, and all foods transformed and ennobled by bacteria. His two books—“Wild Fermentation” and “The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved”—have become manifestos and how-to manuals for a generation of underground food activists, and he’s at work on a third, definitive volume.

Katz was on his way to the Green Path, a gathering of herbalists, foragers, raw-milk drinkers, and roadkill eaters in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains. The groups in Katz’s network have no single agenda or ideology. Some identify themselves as punks, others as hippies, others as evangelical Christians; some live as rustically as homesteaders—the “techno-peasantry,” they call themselves; others are thoroughly plugged in. If they have a connecting thread, it’s their distrust of “dead, anonymous, industrialized, genetically engineered, and chemicalized corporate food.”

Writer describes lunch with a group of opportunivores, who eat discarded food recovered from dumpsters and other sources. Katz believes that Americans are killing themselves with cleanliness. Lunch from a dumpster isn’t just a form of conservation; it’s a kind of inoculation.

Eating bacteria is one of life’s great pleasures, Katz says. Beer, wine, cheese, bread, cured meats, coffee, chocolate: our best-loved foods are almost all fermented. Katz was a political activist long before he was a fermentation fetishist. At Brown, as an undergraduate, his causes were standard issue for the time: gay rights, divestment from South Africa, U.S. out of Central America. After graduation, Katz moved back to New York. He took a job as the executive director of Westpride. As the AIDS epidemic escalated, in the late eighties, Katz became an organizer for ACT UP. Then, in 1991, he found out he was H.I.V.-positive. The virus transformed Katz’s political ambitions. He focussed on curing himself.

In 1992, Katz moved to Hickory Knoll (the name has been changed) in Tennessee. Hickory Knoll was something of a legend in the gay community: a queer sanctuary in the heart of the Bible Belt, with no television or hot running water—just goats, vegetable gardens, and gay men.

Tells about life on the commune and Katz’s experiments with fermentation, including his recipe for sauerkraut, which he calls “the safest food there is.” Tells about the raw-milk movement and discusses the safety of raw milk. Writer visits practitioners of the primal diet, who believe in the importance of eating raw meat, and others who forage food such as acorns and ants. Tells about the Green Path gathering, part ecological retreat and part pagan revival meeting.

Mentions Frank Cook, the founder, who had died a year earlier of a tapeworm infection.

The article will be published in the November 22, 2010 issue of The New Yorker. Until then, you can read the abstract on NewYorker.com.

I Like my Food Live and Kickin

Queen of One's Blog

November 16, 2010

A few years ago I was having huge “gut issues” as my mother would say. Couldn’t eat, felt ill all the time. Took a year, docs treating symptoms not the cause and an elimination diet to figure out me and gluten had to break up. Gasp…I know…During the first year of acclimation both for myself emotionally and my colon I started playing around with live food. By live food I mean live culture foods. Like yogurt, kombucha, sauerkraut, miso etc… I made a lot of sauerkraut and wished I was blogging then cuz those would have been some wicked pics and recipes. During my research and hunting out other fermented yummies I discovered Sandor Katz and his wild fermentation site and book.

It was with his earnest and light-hearted style of writing that I stopped being afraid of playing with live cultures in my kitchen. Granted this year I moved to a place half the size so haven’t been making any yummies and my gut is starting to reflect the loss to its health. A friend of mine recently made his first batch of sauerkraut and its so yummy. I just eat it right from the jar. The current issues with kumbucha has also encouraged me that its time to try my hand at my own kombucha culture…that will be a fun journey to share.

I recently picked up the book "Wild Fermentation" by Sandor Ellix Katz. Wow! This book is inspiring and challenging in all the right ways!

It all starts off with the Foreword by Sally Fallon. In it she writes, "Sandor Katz has labored mightily to deliver this magnum opus to a population hungry for a reconnection to real food and the process of life itself. For fermented foods are not only satisfying to eat, they are also immensely satisfying to prepare. FRom the first successful batch of kombucha to that thrilling taste of homemade sauerkraut, the practice of fermentation is one of partnership with microscopic life. This partnership leads to a reverence for all the processes that contribute to the well being of the human race, from the production of enzymes by invisible bacteria to the gift of milk and meat from the sacred cow."

Imagine, Americans waking up to the reality that they are living in a world of industrialized, generic, chemical, food and wanting to know what food is really supposed to taste like, how its made, and where they fit into the process!